Hi

I have batteling with alsa about an issue and so far could not solve it, so I turn to you esteemed community for aid:

Windows provides a feature that some call "what u hear" which lets you record anything the soundcard plays.
Now assuming the complexe nature of ALSA, I am pretty sure that it provides the same, but how?
(this is talking about a compaq laptop, with one simple soundcard, lspci states "Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)"

I found some posts on the net:
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ALSA also has feature that "secure" audio format makers probably hate with passion: the fact that audio can be copied right back from the sound card...

In theory, this thing can be done using ALSA's PCM device "copy"; like this spell put to ~/.asoundrc:

pcm.copy {
type plug
slave {
pcm hw
}
route_policy copy
}

And then recording things from the card like this:

$ arecord -t wav -D copy target.wav

...but personally, I haven't got this to work; either my skills are lacking, or maybe this won't work properly with the OSS emulation layer that I keep loaded...
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I did as indicated in the post.
As the guys states, it also does not work for me. All I get is as record of the microphone as input, which is not what I want of course.
The PCM device "copy" is also mentioned in the arecord man page, but how it works is not explained.
I am quite confused as to what a PCM device is and how it could solve my problem.

Does anybody possess enough ALSA expertise to help me crack this nut?

Thanks in advance

Markus

i have always done this with an app called audacity. it is gui, not command line, so may not be what your looking for. You may check it out though.

Hi

I know audacity and I love it. But audacity works only with OSS, right? I tried it and it locks the audio channel or cannot access it, when another application is already playing audio (which I would then use audacity to record it from)

But thanks for the suggestion.

Markus

oh, yeah, that used to happen to me too. You can use alsa with audacity. you just have to load the alsa-oss modules. Try a modprobe snd ( i think ) not sure, but it can be done. I am using alsa now with audacity. It will create the /dev/dsp that audacity is looking for.

Hmm, but let's say I get audacity running parallel to the other application.
What input would I define in it to record? I ran it alone and checked out all of them: vol, mic, line, video, etc... and all of them seem to either go to the microphone (vol) or to the other inputs. I see no way to record what the soundcard is already playing.
Am I overseeing something?

Markus